


Names

by a_nonny_moose



Series: Who Killed Markiplier Relevant [2]
Category: Markiplier Egos
Genre: Suicide mention, abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 08:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14233158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_nonny_moose/pseuds/a_nonny_moose
Summary: Damien doesn't go by Damien.





	Names

_"The name Damien is a French baby name. In French the meaning of the name Damien is: one who tames; subdues.'"_  


It’s one of those childhood nicknames, the kind that you can never shake off, no matter how long it’s been. 

It starts in the schoolyard at the turn of the millennia, year 1900 finding Damien, William, and Mark walking home with skinned knees and wide smiles. 

“Whaddya think, Dames?” Will says, balancing on a curb with his arms stretched out.  


“I still say that neither of you will be Mayor,” Mark mutters, giving Will a shove, sending him tumbling into the dirt. A breath, Damien looking down, and Mark jumps forward to land squarely on top of Will.  


“Don’t call me that,” Damien says, scuffing his shoes in the dirt.   


Mark and Will stop tussling for a moment, long enough to look up at Damien. “Well,” William huffs, pushing Mark up, “what am I supposed to call you? Your proper name?”

Damien laughs a little at that, shaking his head as Mark whacks the side of Will’s. “Anything but that.”

“Fine,” Will scoffs, pushing Mark into the dirt before scrambling to his feet. “Whatever you say, Big D.”  


Mark immediately dissolves into giggles, Damien only half-heartedly protesting. Will’s screams of “Big D!” echo down the street until they get back to Mark and Will’s house, the manor as imposing as ever. The three of them disappear into the basement again, ready to spend hours playing pretend. 

Mark’s father hears them all shouting about “Big D,” and only pulls them aside to tell them, the way that adults do, to knock it off. Damien smiles, arms crossed, as Will and Mark squirm under Mr. Iplier’s gaze. 

From then on, the nickname is secret. It’s only ever whispered in the hallways at school, scribbled on the edges of notes and passed around. 

Damien never once hears someone call him ‘Damien’ for the rest of the year, and as annoyed as he is by the replacement, it’s heartwarming. 

At home, he’s always Damien. It’s always “Damien, do this.” “Damien, do that.” Always, the threat of “or else” left unsaid. Damien works with his nose to the ground, his only sound a quiet “yessir.” He’s Damien to Celine, who looks anywhere but his face with her chin in the air. 

Even so, he protects. He’s never lived up to his name, as he’s reminded each day, and he doesn’t plan to. He’s rather only ever be ‘Big D’ than ‘Damien, the subduer.’

The nickname sticks, as it does, and makes it into their high school yearbook. It’s a passing mention, a caption on a photo, but Will is proud of it. He threatens to cut the page out and frame it, even as Mark and Damien laugh. 

Being “Damien” comes to be too much when they graduate and Damien wants to go to university, leave home for the first time. He’d rather be ‘Big D,’ the coolest kid on the block, than ‘Damien,’ the kid already hundreds of thousands in debt. He’d rather be anything, any _one_ , but Damien. 

So he jumps.

He debates having "Big D” carved into his cane when he first receives it, hip and knees bruised and broken from the fall. Anything, anything but the simple “Damien” scribbled into the hospital crutch.

Even when Damien runs for Mayor, even when he’s the talk of the town, there are ribbing, good natured whispers. 

“Isn’t that Big D from high school?”  


“I bet I know how he got the nickname,” usually accompanied by nudging and pointed looks at the group of girls that had named themselves Damien’s fanclub. 

No one looks at William, freshly enlisted and hand firmly around Damien’s waist, despite the breach of protocol. 

Celine will never call him ‘Big D.’ Some things can never be forgiven, at least from her perspective. Damien doesn’t care, now that she’s proven herself uncompromising and opportunistic. She was still his to protect, but Damien is done pleasing people. 

At least, that’s what he tells himself as he shakes hands and kisses babies, a smile squarely in place as people line up to talk to Mayor Damien. 

After all, names have power. To know someone’s name is, at least to Damien, to know them intimately. He learns as many peoples’ names as he can, and never once breathes his own. Sometimes he fools himself that he can be nameless, faceless, in a city for which he is the name and face. 

The illusion of peace, here, doesn’t last long. 

By the time that William leaves for Africa, Damien’s best friends are broken men, and his sister can only sit and stare. Damien is alone with his power, alone with his name, and nothing more. Big D has gone with Will, and for all Damien knows, it’s never coming back. 

A handwritten note, ‘Damien’ outlined in curling, fancy letters. Damien puts the invitation in a stack and marks his calendar, ignoring the way his stomach twists. 

Mark is distant, Will calls himself a Colonel, and never his real name. Damien forgets that his cane almost had ‘Big D’ carved into it as he worries the pommel between his hands. 

The Colonel calls his name after Mark falls, and Big D doesn’t hear it. 

“Damien, I don’t-- oh.”  


The district attorney, an old friend, meets Damien on the balcony with concern in their eyes. Damien has never told them. He’s never told anyone outside of their little hometown, and he doesn’t volunteer the information now. Big D is less than a secret, now. It’s an idea of something that he thinks--knows--is quickly fading away. 

Celine is there, even as lightning strikes outside, and Damien hasn’t seen her in God-knows-how-long. He runs after her, only to see that nothing has changed. 

“I don’t need help from anyone. _Especially you_.”  


Damien sits, and waits, and Celine reaches for him first. A ritual, she says. Find out more, she says.

 _Please, Big D?_ with batting eyelashes and all the vulnerability that forced Damien between her and danger in their childhood. 

Damien agrees. 

It’s too late by the time he figures out that Celine only wants the Manor for herself, by the time he figures out that Celine knows _both_ of his names, enough to offer him up to the spirits on a silver platter.

It’s too late for Damien, far too late, by the time he’s watching a man that looks far too much like him crack his neck on the other side of a mirror. 

* * *

“What do you think, Big D?” Wilford wiggles his eyebrows across at Dark, pointing.   


Dark looks up, smoothing the front of his suit, and tries to remember a time that ‘Big D’ was a nickname, and nothing more. 


End file.
